A Study On ASEAN Environmental Cooperation

Environmental problem is an important issue with the international society generally concerned. International cooperation in the environmental problem becomes one of the important topics for discussion. Nowadays ASEAN's environmental cooperation is attracting more and more attention from the academia and has become an indispensably aspect of the study on ASEAN. With the impressive development of ASEAN's economy, ASEAN's environment has been destroyed with astonishing speed and caused many serious environmental problems such as soil degradation, water pollution, transboundary haze pollution from land and forest fires, air quality decline and loss of biodiversity, etc.. These environmental problems are transnational and indivisible, which decides that the goal to protect regional environment cannot come true if only depending on the effect of one single country. Besides, the inevitability of ASEAN's environmental cooperation is also decided by such backgrounds as the regional and political character of some environmental problems and the common strategic and economic interests of ASEAN member countries. ASEAN began to cooperate in environmental issues from 1970s. After 30 years' endeavor, ASEAN has set up its own environmental cooperation regime including many countries within and out of this region and had made great efforts in the management of transboudary air pollution, the protection in water and aquatic ecosystems and in biodiversity, the improvement in environmental awareness and education, etc.. Even through, ASEAN's environmental cooperation is still restricted by financial, institutional and environmental awareness factors. Only comply with the three countermeasures brought forward in the last part of this thesis, namely developing economy so as to give enough support for ASEAN environmental cooperation, enhancing ASEAN's institutional cooperation in environment area and fully displaying the function of environmental NGOs, can ASEAN's environmental cooperation contribute to creating a developed, prosperous and permanently peaceful ASEAN.